Opinion Elon Musk: Billionaire, tech savant — and a Family Man?

Billionaire and First Buddy of the United States of America. Tech savant and wannabe coloniser of Mars. Edgelord. Elon Musk wears many more hats than the MAGA cap he wore at a recent press conference with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, as well as his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He’s also, as seen in recent photos, including ones from the two official events mentioned above, a Family Man. With his son X Æ A-Xii — “X” for short — perched on his shoulders, Musk cuts quite the paternal figure. “Father of the year” as some adoring social media users gushed; and if not that, then certainly a warmer personality than his many public pronouncements — on unions and workers’ rights, vaccines, the “woke virus”, queer rights and race — convey. Not the man who lacks “the emotional receptors that produce everyday kindness and warmth and a desire to be liked”, as per his biographer Walter Isaacson’s description. A man, in fact, who revels in the company of his child, indulging him and proudly showing him off to the world and its leaders.

Going simply by recent photo-ops, it does seem like Musk is intent on continuing the “family affairs” vibe that was so prominent during Trump 1.0. If Ivanka, Don Jr, Barron and others from the President’s large brood dominated the news cycle during those four years, the next four may very well see the spotlight on X and his 10 siblings — not necessarily of their volition (or even their mothers’, perhaps, going by the anguished tweet from X’s mother, Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes: “He should not be in public like this”). We are likely to see more of them (or, at least, hear more about them) because it softens the billionaire CEO’s sharp angles, making him seem more approachable, less polarising and, almost certainly, more human. What can be more relatable than a doting dad carrying his little tyke piggy-back? Or beaming as a world leader describes one of them as having “high IQ” (Trump about X) or bestows presents on them (PM Modi at his meeting, where three of Musk’s children were in attendance, along with the Tesla CEO’s partner, Shivon Zilis, and the children’s nanny)?

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But Musk, much like his expansive CV, is not so easy to encapsulate. No doubt, his children are a source of great joy to him — even if one of them is currently estranged from him — but in the public eye, they also function as the best promotion for his pronatalist position. The billionaire has not been shy about his views on the birth rate, population and children: The first is in serious decline, particularly in the developed world; the second cannot be allowed to shrink if the economy is to grow; and only having more and more of the third can prevent the catastrophe of a demographic decline. “Humanity’s greatest threat” is what Musk has called it — “a much bigger risk to civilisation than global warming.”

That this is a view shared by several in the conservative base that propelled Trump and his buddy to power cannot be ignored. And here, it’s not just because of fears about how the economy would fare were there no people to prop it up. Musk has been careful to root his pronatalism in economic arguments — although his belief that smart people are duty-bound to propagate their kind has drawn the side-eye, verging as it does on eugenics — but among the MAGA-ists, the old bogeys about divorce, contraception/abortion, “single cat ladies”, queer marriage, and the decline of American culture hold sway.

Musk has made no bones about wanting several more children of his own; indeed, the first two of his three children with his current partner Zilis, an executive at his company Neuralink, were born via IVF, after Musk encouraged her, as a “smart person”, to have children and offered to father them. At the time, he was married to X’s mother Boucher, with whom he was having his second of three kids via a surrogate. He also, at the time, already shared five children with his first wife, Justine Wilson. There’s no missing the woods for this very complicated family tree: As far as children are concerned, Musk believes the more, the merrier. So what if only the world’s richest man can afford them?

pooja.pillai@expressindia.com